The UCF Quantum Initiative brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts working on diverse aspects of quantum technologies – from algorithms for quantum computing and error correction to integrated quantum photonics, quantum metasurfaces, quantum transduction, and solid-state quantum bits – with the unifying goal of exploring and developing solutions for interoperability across platforms and scales and a strong determination to build a competitive workforce in quantum information science and technology (QIST).
This initiative is underpinned by the strong research capabilities in quantum information science and technology present at three UCF colleges: Engineering and Computer Science, Optics and Photonics, and Sciences.
Quantum Seminars (two back-to-back):
1) Wednesday, November 19, 3:30 pm, PSB 160/161: Dr. Elisha Svetistky (Quantum Machines)
Title: Building the quantum control stack
Abstract: Control electronics are a critical component of quantum experiments, and their limitations frequently constrain the space of accessible research. These constraints typically do not stem from analog performance, but from underlying architecture designed for test-and-measurement applications rather than tight classical-quantum integration. In this talk, I will discuss the real-time control technology developed by Quantum Machines. By combining classical processing, pulse generation, measurement, and feedback in a unique processor architecture, the control system is able to interact with quantum devices on coherence timescales. Applications abound in academic research and large-scale quantum computing projects and include quantum error correction, rapid device characterization and stabilization, analog feedback to overcome stochasticity in entangling quantum networks, and maximizing QPU uptime with sophisticated initialization techniques. I will also address challenges in quantum control architecture presented by a maturing quantum computing industry, including tight integration of quantum and high-performance compute resources.
2) Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 4:30 pm, PSB 160/161: Dr. Christina Giarmatzi (Macquarie University, Australia):
Title: Multi-time quantum process tomography on a superconducting qubit
Abstract: Current quantum technologies are at the cusp of becoming useful, but still face formidable obstacles such as noise. Noise severely limits the ability to scale quantum devices to the point that they would offer an advantage over classical devices. To understand the sources of noise it is necessary to fully characterise the quantum processes occurring across many time steps; only this would reveal any time-correlated noise called non-Markovian. Previous efforts have attempted such a characterisation but obtained only a limited reconstruction of such multi-time processes. In this work, we fully characterise a multi-time quantum process on superconducting hardware using in-house and cloud-based quantum processors. We achieve this by employing sequential measure-and-prepare operations combined with post-processing. Employing a recently developed formalism for multi-time processes, we detect general multi-time correlated noise. We also detect quantum correlated noise which demonstrates that part of the noise originates from quantum sources, such as physically nearby qubits on the chip. Our findings and techniques are expected to advance error-mitigation techniques in current quantum hardware, a necessary component to scale up the technology and achieve its true potential. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.00750
Journal Club Seminar
On Monday November 24, at 4:30 pm, in PSB 445, Suman Mandel from Mucciolo’s group will present the paper
“Does provable absence of barren plateaus imply classical simulability?”, by M. Cerezo et al. (LANL group), Nature Comm. 16, 7907 (2025)